Stanford Daily bans email interviews

Stanford Daily has followed the Daily Princetonian in banning email interviews. There have been too many of them, complains Stanford Daily editor-in-chief Billy Gallagher, and because of that “we are failing our readers in our duty to give them quality journalism and not serve merely as a conduit for community PR.”

We will continue to use email for simple inquiries, such as data requests and statements. In the past, we have attributed all email responses as “wrote in an email to The Daily.” From now on, we will treat anything in an email as its true nature, a press release, attributing it as “wrote in a statement.”

Gallagher says email interviews will only be approved by the paper’s top two editors if a source is out of the country “and is unable to do an interview via Skype or other technology.”